At a quarter to eleven on the morning of the following Sunday, Fanny paced the long, narrow hallway and rubbed at her side. She had a strange sort of pain in the rib area. Was it caused by the baby? Or the fact that she was about to commit a transgression for the first time in her married life – and possibly ever?

Her spirit started to tremble. She could not do it! She would not do it! But then the party descended the stairs, dressed and ready for church and, somehow, she did.

‘Not this morning, my dear.’ Fanny put a hand on Mary’s shoulder, like a constable. ‘Sir Edward, would you mind terribly if Mary and I stayed back this morning? There is so much to do – the Indigent Blind, for my sins. The demands are unending!’

Mary stared at her with a puzzled expression, as well she might. Fanny had not mentioned the poor blind, nor given them a thought, since her baby was born.

‘We shall go to the service this evening,’ she ran on before the blush took her into its grip. ‘Marianne will accompany you now. Thank you so much, my dear.’

And when her sweet, caring husband – whom the world thought so difficult – went off like a lamb, Fanny could almost feel the fresh stain seep into her soul.

She ushered Mary into the parlour, retrieved the work basket which she had so long ignored and together the two ladies sat and arranged their materials. The atmosphere between them was unchanged from that when they first met. Not icy, exactly – to be fair to the girl, never that – but a cool sort of politeness which Fanny loathed. She listened to herself gabble – the weather; the likely congregation at church; her own father’s gout – and despaired as conversation eluded them both. Once the morning’s ordeal was behind them, she must somehow establish an intimacy.

At last, as arranged, at one minute past the hour – just as the vicar ascended the pulpit and worship began – there came a sharp rap of the knocker, the creak of the heavy front door. Voices in the hallway.

And Ned strode in.

‘Dear Fan,’ he declared as he kissed her cheek with a warmth he had not shown for some years. ‘I will forever be grateful.’

‘Ten minutes, mind.’ Fanny felt rather like Nanny. ‘Dear boy,’ she whispered only to him, ‘I implore you to not make a scene.’ And with that, she withdrew to the breakfast room and left them alone.